2. Camera Features

On the top of the camera, centered in the chrome accent strip, are five buttons plus the shutter release. There’s a power on/off button, one to control the flash mode (auto, off, on and red eye). By default, the camera initializes in the still photo mode in the fully automatic mode. By default, the flash is set to auto and the resolution is set to the highest resolution - 6 megapixels. There’s a separate button to switch to video recording mode, still picture mode, and a button to bring up your favorites album.

Back of the Kodak V610 camera

The V610 features a 2.8" LCD screen. Though the screen is fairly bright and quite usable in most conditions, we did find that, like most camera LCDs, it was difficult to see in bright sunlight. Without a viewfinder, some outdoor pictures were difficult to frame, and changing settings required finding some shade.

On the right side of the back of the camera, there’s a rocker control for zooming in/out. There’s also a four position switch used for navigation through menus and changing views along with a center "OK" button. Arranged vertically along the left rear of the camera are five switches. There’s a switch to access the scene selection screen, a delete key, a menu key, a review key, and finally a share key. Though the buttons are attractive, we felt that they were too small and spaced too closely together. You have to press the buttons with the side of your thumb, or risk pressing two buttons at once.

With 22 pre-defined shooting modes, the V610 can produce excellent results in virtually any type of setting without the consumer having to know anything about f-stops, ISO or white balance. When you press the scene button, 22 icons appear on the screen. As you scroll through each icon, a description of the mode is displayed. Each scene mode optimizes the camera settings for the type of scene selected. Scene modes include sunset, sports, landscape, closeup, and panoramic.

Scene selection screen

For consumers who want to tweak on some of the settings, there are adjustments for exposure compensation +/- two f stops in 0.3 increments, white balance (auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, open shade), ISO (Auto, 64, 100, 200,400), resolution, color and self timer. However, more advanced photographers will probably find the V610 somewhat frustrating to use, as there’s no mention of F stops or apertures. The V610 completely insulates you from the exposure settings so you can’t really determine what exposures were used until you check out the EXIF 2.21 file information. As you might expect, there’s also not a shutter or aperture priority mode on the V610.

The four position switch functions differently depending on whether you’re in capture mode or playback mode. In capture mode, the left and right buttons control exposure compensation. The down button scrolls through normal, landscape and macro modes. The up arrow controls the information displayed on the screen. By default, the screen shows shooting mode, flash mode, resolution, number of pictures remaining, image storage location and auto-focus mode.

In addition, the exposure compensation amount is shown at the bottom of the screen. The first tap of the up arrow clears the screen of all information icons. The next tap restores the default information icons, and adds in a 3 X 3 shooting grid. The fourth and final view adds in a histogram in the lower left corner of the screen.

Capture mode. Note the zoom indicator on the left.

In review mode, the left and right buttons scroll through the pictures. The up arrow scrolls through three views: one with information icons, one view showing only the image, and a third view that shows information icons along with file name, date/time, resolution and the image histogram. When used in conjunction with the zooming controls that let you zoom in 1X-8X, the four buttons let you scroll around the picture. During Video playback, the up/down buttons adjust the volume and the left/right buttons change the playback speed to 2X or 4X.